Vision by Dean Koontz Page B

beneath him and on the blurred pavement that succumbed to him, he rarely had patience for conversation. He looked like a bird of prey, flint-eyed, silent, hunched over the steering wheel.
    When he drove like that, Mary could see the recklessness, the taste for excitement and violence that had gotten him into dozens of fights. Oddly, she wasn’t frightened by that aspect of him ; instead, she found him more attractive than ever.
    They rocketed toward Los Angeles at ninety miles an hour.
     
 
The eighteen-room English Tudor house in Bel Air looked cool and elegant in the shade of thirty-foot trees. The two-acre estate had cost her virtually every dollar that she had earned from her first two best-sellers, but she had never regretted the cost.
    When they parked in the circular drive, Emmet Churchill came out to greet them. He had gray hair and a neat mustache. He was sixty years old, but his face was unlined. A life in service had been remarkably agreeable to both Emmet and his wife. “Good trip, Mr. Bergen?”
    “Fine,” Max said. “Had it up to one-twenty for a few miles, and Mary didn’t scream once.”
    “I would have,” Emmet said.
    Mary had expected to find another Mercedes in the driveway. “Isn’t Alan home?”
    “He stopped by for fresh clothes,” Emmet said. “But he was anxious to be off on vacation.”
    She was disappointed. She’d hoped for another chance to convince him that he and Max could get along if they tried. “How’s Anna?” she asked Emmet.
    “Couldn’t be better. When you called this morning to say that you’d be home, she started planning dinner right away. She’s in the kitchen now.”
    “As soon as Max freshens up, he’ll be going to Beverly Hills to do some shopping,” Mary told Emmet. “You’ll want to get our luggage out of the Mercedes before he leaves.”
    “Right away.”
    She started toward the front door. “And would you get my car out of the garage? I’ve got a four-thirty appointment with Dr. Cauvel. I want—”
    The man coming at her, relentless, power in the blow, a knife deep in her stomach, blade twisting, flesh tearing, blood erupting, pain erupting, blackness flowing, flowing ...
     
 
She regained consciousness as Max put her down on the bed in the second-floor master suite. She clung to him. She couldn’t stop shaking.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Hold me,” she said.
    He did. “Easy. Easy now.”
    She could feel the strong, unhurried beat of his heart. After a while she said, “I’m thirsty.”
    “Is that all? Aren’t you hurt? Should I call a doctor?”
    “Just get me some water.”
    “You passed out.”
    “I’m fine now.”
    When he came back from the bathroom with the water, he helped her sit up. He held the glass, tilted it as she drank, nursed her as if she were a sick child. When she was finished, he said, “What happened?”
    Leaning against the headboard, she said, “Another vision that I didn’t ask for. Only ... it’s different from anything that’s come before.”
    She must have gone pale, for he said, “Calm down. It’s over.
    He looked good. Marvelous. So big and reliable.
    She did calm down somewhat, merely because he told her she should.
    “I didn’t just see the damned thing, Max. I felt it. A knife. I felt a knife going into me, ripping me apart ... ”
    She put one hand on her belly. There was no wound. No bruise. The flesh wasn’t even tender.
    “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You saw yourself being stabbed to death?”
    “No.”
    “What did you see?”
    She got up, waved him away as he moved to support her. She went to the window and looked out at the forty-foot pool behind the main house, at the lush grounds and at the Churchill’s little house at the far end of the property. Ordinarily she would have been calmed further by this evidence of prosperity ; but now it had no effect on her. “I saw another woman. Not me. But I felt her pain as if it were mine.”
    “That’s never happened